A single gal pal of mine bemoaned, Why do I keep choosing men with problems?

To date real people is to encounter human problems. There’s no escaping this fact. The perfect partners we dream of simply don’t exist.

But which issues are fatal and which ones workable? How do we sort out the genuine red flags from the merely yellow?

There’s a heck of a lot of advice out there about who to avoid, not settling for a less-than-perfect relationship, etc., etc.

But at the end of the day, if we want to be coupled, this means committing ourselves to some real human being with real human flaws. Including some major flaws.

Which should be just fine, since we, too, bring our enormous imperfections to the party (oh yes, we do!!), and we’ll need that other person to love us and accept us and adore us, baggage and all!

Let’s appreciate this reality: We are older, better informed, more independent, more experienced … and also way more emotionally beaten-up … than any previous members of the human race. We’ve had years and decades of relationships and break-ups and new attachments and dashed hopes and multiple fresh starts and …

And these experiences affect us, for better, for worse, in permanent and also temporary ways.

Relationships exert gravitational forces on both partners. Couples change each other; people are different with different partners and different from who they might be when single.

A stressful relationship warps and twists both people, often in profound ways they themselves either don’t notice or prefer to deny.

So if you’re becoming involved with someone who has just lived through years of relationship hell, you might want to sit back and be patient and reserve judgment. Those quirky behaviors, adamant theories, blurting needs, mixed messages? … they might not be permanent personality features; they might instead be the throes of emotional recovery.

In Should You Leave?, Peter Kramer portrays Hank, a man who just broke up with his girlfriend, Bianca:

… something odd is occurring. Hank loses a girlfriend, but he gains self. How he was with Bianca — that was not Hank … Fused couples — and we are all this way to some degree — are like two on a seesaw …

People are prone to the Fundamental Attribution Error; we suffer from the illusion that, whereas we ourselves are flexible and respond differently in different situations, we believe that other people have immutable character traits which cause them to behave the same way over and over again.

We think we can read important facts from our lover’s past relationship choices and behaviors, but this sort of private researching is highly biased and unreliable. Although much relationship advice cautions us against falling in love with certain “types” of people, in fact these types are largely illusory. All people vary widely in their behaviors depending on the situations they are in.

A much better idea is to move slowly in your new relationship … be patient … get to know each other well … and find out over time who you can become together.

Good Music for a Good Cause Check out UFO’s album, Unity Creates Strength, to benefit Chile and Haiti

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (March 16, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
Learning to Embrace the Love I've Found | Always Learning (May 5, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 16 Mar 2010